Development plans for County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center take long view

There's good news and bad news about future development plans at County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

The good news is that there will be plenty of parking in above-ground structures, more patient beds, lots of open grassy areas, and retail stores on the 72-acre site near Torrance.

The bad news is that all of those improvements won't be in place until 2030.

A new campus master plan outlining the future layout of the site was introduced to the public this week. Los Angeles County officials, who commissioned the plan, expect it to guide a complicated web of construction projects over the next two decades.

The impetus for the improvements is a 2030 deadline to replace the existing hospital's inpatient tower. Though it has been seismically retrofitted, state earthquake safety requirements demand that the 1960s-era building be replaced within 18 years.

County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose 2nd District includes the hospital, said the $3 million spent on the plan was worthwhile - even though results will not be visible for years.

This planning process "tries to cause us to think together about what can happen here," Ridley-Thomas said. "Otherwise what happens is a series of ad hoc buildings. We don't want disorganization on this campus. Master planning goes hand in hand with mental health services."

Current construction on the emergency department at the Harbor-UCLA campus and a new parking garage is set to finish in 2013. But Ridley-Thomas said the current construction would have benefited by more big-picture planning, such as the designs released this week.

"We put $322 million into the current construction, only to find out it could have been done better or smarter. This is an attempt to do it smart," Ridley-Thomas said.

At two community meetings last year, residents and employees discussed current and future needs for the site. Design firm Perkins+Will based its conceptual plans on some of those recommendations.

The final master plan, presented at Harbor-UCLA on Monday night, illustrated a much more organized and modern layout than the current campus, which is punctuated by overcrowded surface parking, termite-infested barracks, and temporary green construction fences.

"There are three priority issues," Ridley-Thomas said. "The first is parking. The second is parking. The third is what? Parking."

For that reason, a 550-space staff parking structure was incorporated into the master plan's first phase, along with two new buildings for Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute. LA BioMed, as the research institute is known, is Harbor-UCLA's anchor tenant, and 80 percent of its researchers also are doctors at the hospital.

LA BioMed President David Meyer said the research facility would be condensed from about 30 acres to an 11-acre compound on the southern portion of the campus. Once finished, it would be composed of three new four-story research buildings, a campus center with dining facilities, parking and new landscaping. LA BioMed renovations will precede hospital construction to provide as much campus parking throughout the construction phase as possible.

"I think it's a great outline for where things can go," Meyer said of the new master plan. "It has a lot of new parking structures, which is absolutely necessary. I think it's laid out really well."

The first phase should be finished within four years, and will be followed by new outpatient medical offices along Carson Street two years later, said Perkins+Will Associate Principal Russ Triplett. By 2021, construction on all outpatient buildings and most of the parking lots and structures will be completed, planners said. Most support services in the current hospital will have been moved out by then as well.

A new hospital tower, completion of new LA BioMed facilities and a plethora of new landscaping - including rooftop gardens that will be visible from hospital rooms - will be completed by 2028, according to the plan. The new hospital would include about 100 more patient beds because the 339 existing beds are usually filled beyond capacity.

Throughout construction, parking will continue to be a problem, Triplett said. But when finished, planners anticipate a total of 3,590 parking spaces in nine lots.

Attendees at Monday night's master plan presentation questioned whether that would be enough, considering the additional outpatient medical offices and retail stores planned for the campus.

"We're never going to be 100 percent sure but we used the best parking consultant, and we didn't look at (how many parking spaces to build) from a code perspective. We looked at it from a demand perspective," Triplett said.

"We always want to leave an empty chair. You never know what the future's going to hold."